Before the crisis years, sons and daughters of the Mbengwi villages returned home every Easter, and Easter Saturday was the standard day for the village associations to hold their annual general meetings. GUDECA met on that day, as did BADA of the Bome area, MEDA of Mbengwi and NJICUDA of Njindom, each in its own village.
The crisis broke the pattern. A good number of the associations moved their annual meetings from Easter to the Christmas season, and several stopped meeting at home altogether for years.
The cultural formula of those gatherings is worth recording, because it returned later in a larger form: members were asked to dress traditionally and to bring wooden bowls, calabashes, fibre bags and baskets, and the fare was palm wine, kola nuts, and porridge cocoyams with plantains — the traditional delicacy of the Meta people. Four years later the same formula shaped Mɨchi Ǝbeŋ.
On the name
This report expands GUDECA as the Guneku Development Association. Elsewhere in the record it is the Guneku Development and Cultural Association, which is the form this site uses. The variation is noted rather than resolved.